Alisson Becker reveals his “great idol in football”

Alisson Becker has revealed who his ‘great idol in football’ is – his older brother, Muriel, with whom he speaks on the phone after every single game.

Muriel Becker is five-and-a-half years older than Alisson and currently plays for Belenenses in Portugal, also as a goalkeeper.

And no matter what the result, the two will always share a post-match debrief.

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DUBLIN, IRELAND – AUGUST 04: Alisson Becker of Liverpool during the international friendly game between Liverpool and Napoli at Aviva Stadium on August 4, 2018 in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

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“If I’m not playing at the same time as him, I watch his games,” Alisson told the official Liverpool website.

“He calls me after the games to talk through what happened – and vice-versa, after my games I call him and ask him what he thought of that play, that sequence, that event, whether I could’ve done anything differently.

“We have this relationship of friends and also playing in the same position. I continue to learn a lot from him.

“I have a family of goalkeepers. My father played for his work team, my mother played handball in school, and my grandfather played in amateur football. And after all this, came my brother playing and then I started to like it, too.

“I started to watch him training and then started feeling passion for the position. It’s in my blood, it’s in my family, so I started to follow them and to play in goal.

“What comes into my mind when I think about my old times is when I played with my uncles and my cousins.

“We always met and played together in front of my house. Sometimes I’d be the goalie and sometimes the striker but almost always I went in goal – and then my uncles would be shooting the ball at me like they were in training!

“So I started to train there, early and on the street, with my uncles, my cousins, my brother and my friends. This is my best memory of being that age. I remember doing it at seven or eight years old.”

TERESOPOLIS, BRAZIL – MAY 24: Goalkeeper Alisson Becker in action during a training session of the Brazilian national football team at the squad’s Granja Comary training complex on May 24, 2018 in Teresopolis, Brazil. (Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images)

And Alisson, despite being of Brazilian heritage with dozens of legendary players to choose from, decided long ago that his older brother was his idol in football.

“My great idol in soccer is my brother. I grew up watching him training, playing, but I always liked [Gianluigi] Buffon and Taffarel too,” Alisson said.

“They are, for me, the best goalkeepers in the world of all-time. Like a good Brazilian, I grew up listening to my father talk about Taffarel, about what he did in the World Cup in ’94.

“I remember a little bit of the World Cup in ’98, so I saw with my own eyes his quality. Now I know him personally and I discovered that he’s even better as a person than he was as a player, so today he is even more of an idol than he was at that time.”

“In Brazil we had a lot of kids with quality. You grow up with your friends always playing football and sometimes you have to do what you are best at, and I always did better as a goalkeeper. So from the beginning when I started playing with my friends in beach soccer, I always liked to be the goalie. It was not an option – you do what you are best at.

LONDON, ENGLAND – AUGUST 20: Alisson of Liverpool reacts during the Premier League match between Crystal Palace and Liverpool FC at Selhurst Park on August 20, 2018 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)

“I started competing at 10 years old – at that age I knew I wanted to be a goalkeeper.

“At that time you don’t know if you’re going to make it or not. You have the dream of making it, but the competition is fierce in Brazil as there are a lot of high-quality young players.

“I started believing that this would be my profession when I signed my first pro contract at 16 years old. That’s when it sank in that I would be a professional goalkeeper.

“But it’s never been a hobby for me, I’ve never considered it to be a hobby. I’ve always taken it really seriously, as my dream.

“It’s always been my dream, but from 16 years old when I started being called up for the Brazilian national youth team, that’s when I realised that things were getting serious.”

Read the rest of Alisson’s brilliant interview at LiverpoolFC.com.

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Source: anfieldhq.com